I've been under the impression that Anarchists tend to hate modern technology like computers, but I wasn't quite sure. In an anarchist society, would modern technology like computers exist? I am unsure of my political stance right now and I'm considering anarchism, but I'm also kind of a computer nerd and so I was wondering if it'd be an oxymoron for an Anarchist to like computers and modern technology.

1 Answer

+1 vote

many anarchists are not against technology at all. there are plenty of anarchists who see technology as a possible solution to things like information dispersal, centralization of power, etc. however, those anarchists don't usually come to this site (iconoclast is an exception, i think).

this particular website has attracted a number of anarchists who do have a critique of technology.
but the critique of the world we live in doesn't mean that we don't live in the world.
ie, anarchists use all kinds of things that they/we are against.
a) we want to be understood by others, and b) there's no linear relationship between the change we want and us individually refusing to use a particular thing or set of things.
you could use language as an example. there are many things in english that are problematic - like the ease with with object and subject are seen as distinct and unconnected, and the related assumptions that the structure of english validate and recreate. but if i stopped speaking english, i wouldn't be able to live a life, or to encourage you to think about english differently, and it's unlikely that my rejection of my birth language would make much difference towards a different world.
in actual fact, i like language, and i spend time correcting people's spelling and punctuation and grammar... which one could say is directly contradicted by my sense of what the world should be like...